Nine: Two Out of Three
During the five-year interim before all of the Erickson property became mine, I had plenty of time to mull over what to do next. The first priority was money for the balloon payment. With the income from commercial plant sales and service, I was able to put that away. The greater questions were what to do with the chinchilla shed, how to disappear the Phranques Gallery (which was practically falling down on its own), and how to evict the billboard.
On my limited budget, all ideas seemed expensive, but parking was a priority. The manager at the 7-Eleven had come over twice, accusing me of leading my customers in a hostile takeover of his parking lot. I needed to demolish the gallery and replace it with yellow striped concrete, ASAP. The downside of this would be exposing the chinchilla shed to the street—not a pretty sight. It, too, had to be demolished or remodeled.
The building was old, but it was solid. Its ceiling was high, and big windows had been cut in the cinderblock. Big windows with no glass. And even though it had no running water, it had a certain charm—an important part of many business infrastructures. It seemed a shame to destroy it. If I were to tear it down, I would build more greenhouses, but at the moment, I thought we had endless space for plants. It wasn’t until later that I would apply Miss Piggy’s mantra to greenhouse additions: More is Never Enough.
What about a gift shop? With a gift shop, we’d be adding another reason for people to come to Cactus & Tropicals, another draw. At the very least, it would make shopping there a bigger experience. Hopefully, it would give us another revenue stream.
And, just to throw in all the expenses, we would need fencing, a new entrance, and new signage. Some landscaping. More sidewalk.
Bank time! I put a rough budget together and went back to the same bank that had given my brother and me a mortgage on the “little house” ten years earlier, where I also currently did my business banking. I met with a new loan officer, Richard Gray, and gave him a short history of Cactus & Tropicals, the Grass Menagerie, eminent domain, building the cactus house, and buying the Phranques backyard. Then I told him what I had in mind for the future. I invited him over, and to my great relief and joy, he caught the vision. He told me he certainly could see the need for parking, so I assumed he was parked over at the 7-Eleven. (I hoped the manager hadn’t seen him).
Richard was in charge of SBA loans for the bank. The Small Business Administration is a government agency that, among other things, guarantees bank loans to small businesses, thus taking the risk away from the bank. It was established under President Eisenhower. The application process is onerous, requiring not only elaborate financial information but also a company history and a detailed business plan for the future. I had to do it.
Although I had saved the money for the balloon payment to the Erickson’s, the new loan rolled the purchase of Phranques and the balance on the “little house” into one, and included the cost of demolition, the parking lot, and the remodel of the chinchilla shed into a garden gift shop. I could use my own cash for gift shop inventory and all the other expenses I hadn’t yet thought of. Richard would become my greatest mentor and advocate, which he was to many wannabe tycoons. He had a knack for seeing entrepreneurism in a person’s soul. Still, his primary role was to get his customer a loan. Finding a banker like Richard Gray is truly a gift.
While the loan process was underway, I dealt with the Salt Lake County Planning and Zoning Office. (By now, they were calling me by my first name.) They’d let me slide on a permit for the foliage houses, but they weren’t going to let me slide on my plans for the chinchilla shed. It was built in the late 1940s when code required a three-foot side yard. Now, fire code requires ten feet. The seven-foot shortfall had the inspector stumped and anguished. At first, it looked like he would simply turn my application down but he came up with a solution. To me it was a solution without merit. He wanted me to build a ten-foot-high cinderblock fire wall right on the property line (three feet from the shed wall). That didn’t make sense! The shed was just that: a ten-foot-high cinderblock wall. Plus, the remodel included a metal roof. What possible good would another ten-foot-high cinderblock wall do? I was at a stand-off with Planning and Zoning.
I talked to my neighbor, Ron, who owned the adjoining property. He said the shed was there when he bought his house and it never bothered him. He didn’t want a ten-foot wall on his property line. I had a hair-brained idea, so I asked Ron, “How about I buy seven feet of your property, front to back. That will give me a ten-foot side yard and end the need for a fire wall. When the construction is complete and the building permit signed off, I’ll deed back the seven feet and pave the parking area in front of your house.” By the way, contrary to what one might think, this was not illegal. At the time, 20th East did not have sidewalks and street parking was a muddy mess in rain or snow. Ron agreed. When I got ready to go, he smiled and asked, “When are you going to buy my property?”
Richard and I were working on the loan application, Ron and I were doing the legal stuff to buy a strip of his property, and it was time to invite the billboard company to leave. It was Gloria’s understanding that she had signed a ten-year contract to expire at the end of 1987. The contract itself had an ancient appearance, like it had been printed on a hand-crank mimeograph machine. It was on legal size paper, dense with eight-point type. The dates were blank lines, filled in by hand. It read, “This is a ten-year contract beginning December 31st of 1977 and ending December 31st of 1987.” It even had a friendly, handwritten note in the margin promising to plant and prune shrubs around the billboard. It was folksy.
When the time came, I called the billboard company.
“Time to go,” I said.
“No,” they responded. “The billboard stays. It has ten more years. You didn’t read the small print in the final paragraph.”
The Ericksons had missed it, I missed it, and two attorneys missed it. I searched the document and found a phrase—not even a complete sentence—several paragraphs after the one with the handwritten dates. It read, “and therefore, for a like successive period thereafter.”
I sued the billboard company. My attorney said I had a good case. In challenging the legality of the contract, she used the terms “unconscionable” (not fair or in good conscience) and “illusory” (based on trickery). The judge agreed that the phrase “and therefore, for a like successive period” in tiny type, buried in the body of the final paragraph, was slippery, although I don’t think he used that term. Still, he ruled against me, decreeing that a contract is a contract and a signatory should be wise enough to understand what they were signing.
The billboard was a burden I would bear for ten more years. My beloved parking lots would be built around it. Still, with the bank loan approved and the building permit signed, I’d won two out of three.